Why are Math Skills Declining?

[bush_cheney2004]

Still doesn't change the fact that America's scores are considerably worse than Canada's despite you claiming we need America's "help."

The topic is lousy math skills in Canada....deflecting to America (the oh-so usual dodge) won't change those crappy scores.

[cybercoma]

The topic is lousy math skills in Canada....deflecting to America (the oh-so usual dodge) won't change those crappy scores.

YOU were the one who brought up America. I'm telling you that you don't want to introduce America's utterly garbage education system into the discussion. Try to keep up.

[bush_cheney2004]

More dodging and excuses...what should be done about the crappy math skills found in Canadian youth ? Try to imagine an answer without always pointing at the U.S.

Edited May 30, 2015 by bush_cheney2004

[cybercoma]

More dodging and excuses...what should be done about the crappy math skills found in Canadian youth ? Try to imagine an answer without always pointing at the U.S.

Like I said, you shouldn't have brought up the US because you really don't want to talk about it.

[GostHacked]

You don't want to talk about America's math skills. You're scraping the bottom of the barrel of industrialized nations.

As they have had MUCH more experience with Common Core than us Canadians. So we saw the decline south of the 49th knowing we'd be seeing it up here. They are like the canary in the coal mine in many many aspects. Well better them than us!

OH, and don't feed the trolls

Edited May 30, 2015 by GostHacked

[cybercoma]

OH, and don't feed the trolls

Noted!

[Ash74]

This is not the first time we have discussed the math programs in Canada. Now we are seeing more and more that the basic fundamentals are not being learned by today's students. How is this a surprise?

Besides teachers are too busy fighting for raises in Ontario right now to be that concerned. Oh yeah, it is not about money....right...

[Wilber]

I didn't say that all memorization is bad, Wilber. The times tables would naturally fall into place over time, thru, yes, memorization.

Odd that we stop at 12 times, when it's the numbers above 12 times that are the ones in need of real memorization. It's simply an educational artifact, similar in nature and efficacy to the myriad idiotic "grammar rules" everyone thinks they learned but nobody can remember.

Yet according to the OECD, the highest scoring countries in math, reading and science are all Asian. Societies who's education systems stress memorization.

[bush_cheney2004]

Yet according to the OECD, the highest scoring countries in math, reading and science are all Asian. Societies who's education systems stress memorization.

Aye....a very keen observation. Here is an example of base 10 times tables found in China....from about 2,300 years ago:

[WestCoastRunner]

Yet according to the OECD, the highest scoring countries in math, reading and science are all Asian. Societies who's education systems stress memorization.

I have found working with Asians over the last 10 years is that yes they have excellent skills in those areas. However when you leave them on their own to be creative and problem solving without structure in place and letting them know what exactly needs to be solved it can be frustrating for them.

I know I am speaking from personal experience but that is what I have found.

Don't ask me for cites. I don't have them. I'm speaking simply from my work experience in the lower mainland of bc.

[socialist]

I have found working with Asians over the last 10 years is that yes they have excellent skills in those areas. However when you leave them on their own to be creative and problem solving without structure in place and letting them know what exactly needs to be solved it can be frustrating for them.

I know I am speaking from personal experience but that is what I have found.

Don't ask me for cites. I don't have them. I'm speaking simply from my work experience in the lower mainland of bc.

Which specific problems could they not solve? I hear this same nonsense at district PDs. Your comment is a cliche in the handbook of excuses.

[socialist]

YOU were the one who brought up America. I'm telling you that you don't want to introduce America's utterly garbage education system into the discussion. Try to keep up.

There are some very good schools in the USA. They are some very bad schools in the USA. The same can be said for Canada. We have 1/11th the population of the USA. With 370 million people, you would expect there to be more problems. Would a public high school of 200 students be less problematic than a public high school of 2000 students? Yes it would be. That's why only fools compare one country to another. I don;t play that silly game. You shouldn't either.

[WestCoastRunner]

Which specific problems could they not solve? I hear this same nonsense at district PDs. Your comment is a cliche in the handbook of excuses.

Well it's not a cliche when I have to deal with it

I'm speaking specifically on software engineering solutions. There is definitely a lack of creative thinking and arriving at solutions.

[Je suis Omar]

Yet according to the OECD, the highest scoring countries in math, reading and science are all Asian. Societies who's education systems stress memorization.

You don't have to run around looking for examples, Wilber, we mostly agree. The point I am making is that a lot of traditional education is nonsense. There's every reason, all good ones, to create situations where students get to use schoolin' in real life ways. That is after all, what education is meant for.

I've seen the results of the Asian emphasis on memorization. It has its place. A lot of it ain't pretty.

[socialist]

You don't have to run around looking for examples, Wilber, we mostly agree. The point I am making is that a lot of traditional education is nonsense. There's every reason, all good ones, to create situations where students get to use schoolin' in real life ways. That is after all, what education is meant for.

I've seen the results of the Asian emphasis on memorization. It has its place. A lot of it ain't pretty.

Here is an interesting perspective.

https://ofpossibleworlds.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/when-will-i-ever-need-this/

[Wilber]

I'm just guessing but somewhere close to 50 mph.

Nope, way off. It's just simple multiplication and division. Quite simple to do without a calculator if you learned how. Just takes a bit longer.

[Wilber]

You don't have to run around looking for examples, Wilber, we mostly agree. The point I am making is that a lot of traditional education is nonsense. There's every reason, all good ones, to create situations where students get to use schoolin' in real life ways. That is after all, what education is meant for.

I've seen the results of the Asian emphasis on memorization. It has its place. A lot of it ain't pretty.

It does have its place. I worked for and with the Japanese for five years and am well aware of its limitations and advantages. Discovery learning is all very well but employers aren't willing to wait around until you discover answers to stuff you should already know.

[socialist]

You don't have to run around looking for examples, Wilber, we mostly agree. The point I am making is that a lot of traditional education is nonsense. There's every reason, all good ones, to create situations where students get to use schoolin' in real life ways. That is after all, what education is meant for.

I've seen the results of the Asian emphasis on memorization. It has its place. A lot of it ain't pretty.

There was an excellent discussion about math on CBC. It is roughly 2 hours long. May interesting comments.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/is-there-something-wrong-with-the-way-math-is-being-taught-1.3093910

[Bonam]

You don't want to talk about America's math skills. You're scraping the bottom of the barrel of industrialized nations.

Clearly you don't since you tried to change the channel twice in this post alone. The pathetic failing American system isn't one any nation aspires to.

America's system isn't failing... it's just succeeding by a different set of parameters. In international surveys, education systems are ranked by how good the average kid is. America doesn't care about the average result, or the equality of results, as much as other nations. Instead, the system is optimized (whether accidentally or purposefully) to create a smaller number of people that excel at very high levels. Hence why America has the majority of the world's top universities, is the source of a disproportionate amount of scientific, technological, and medical innovation, etc. Other nations may not aspire to replicate America's rankings in elementary school tests, but America is the envy of the world when it comes to the final outcomes of education.

[waldo]

America's system isn't failing... it's just succeeding by a different set of parameters. In international surveys, education systems are ranked by how good the average kid is. America doesn't care about the average result, or the equality of results, as much as other nations. Instead, the system is optimized (whether accidentally or purposefully) to create a smaller number of people that excel at very high levels. Hence why America has the majority of the world's top universities, is the source of a disproportionate amount of scientific, technological, and medical innovation, etc. Other nations may not aspire to replicate America's rankings in elementary school tests, but America is the envy of the world when it comes to the final outcomes of education.

your skewed view on "final outcomes" doesn't speak to the/a country at large. One accepted comparative country measure is adult tertiary attainment (education 'beyond high school'); in that regard, per OECD rankings, the U.S. is near the top... but not at the top, behind Canada & the Russian Federation (tied at 53% of adults with tertiary education), Japan and Israel. Per the OECD graphic below, one might question the low(er) U.S. rate of tertiary attainment between 2000 and 2012... why was the U.S. rate so much lower in that period (at 7% relative to the 11% average) particularly in relation to some countries that increased between 15% and 20%? What might that be indicative of?

[PIK]

Teachers.

[socialist]

There was a forum held in Alberta recently that dealt with declining math scores in Canada. This is quite lengthy. There were 4 main speakers. I found it interesting. Alberta used to be tops in Canada in math but has seen a rapid decline. Many are asking why? I found the 4th presenter made some interesting points. But it left me wondering what a university math professor knows about teaching little kids when we have many different levels in one classroom.

Edited June 6, 2015 by socialist

[H10]

Lazy kids, changing demographics with inferior genes.

[H10]

Which specific problems could they not solve? I hear this same nonsense at district PDs. Your comment is a cliche in the handbook of excuses.

I've found the same thing as the other posters. Notice its an asian mother pushing this about Alberta bad math system because he daughter doesn't perform well enough because its not tailored to her asian culture. How ironic is that, when not given route memorization clear path instructions on how to solve the answer and get to the answer, asian students perform poorly. She is a doctor so one would imagine her child would be smart, or she could help the kid or hire a tutor, but nope, asian tutor can't help you be more creative or teach you how to problem solve. You even see the same thing with China. They manufacture almost all of the world's goods, but invent nearly none of them despite being 1/6th world population and the largest economy. Their cultures allow them to memorize a large set of facts due to them not having an alphabet, so every word must be individually memorized, stroke by stroke with up to 13 stroke PER WORD.

For instance, there have been 36,000 patents in ALL of China. Compared to 45,500 patents in Maryland. When you look how tiny Maryland is and how huge China is, there is no explanation for this other than Chinese culture lacks creativity. I truly believe their culture makes them great at memorizing, poor at solving problems. People want to say its the style of teaching. Well guess what, when you are conducting research, there is no guidelines, everything is open ended, you don't know where things are going to go. There is no teacher holding your hand to tell you how to memorize the experiment to find the solution to your research project. So might as well start them off young to weed out the less creative minds.

I have found that Asians who work under me, need exact specific instructions and if you don't give it to them, its like they lack the common sense other canadians do. Many of my colleagues have found the same, HR gets so many complaints, we don't even hire asians any more. Its just white, black and jew and the occasional indian.

[Scott Mayers]

How do you feel math should be taught? Any suggestions?

I can't comment on "Discovery Math" if it is simply some patent style. I looked up examples online and it appears that many of the methods being used are NOT about 'discovery' so much as it is about mapping methods derived from pure math to ways many people can apply them in a quicker way. This doesn't teach them the underlying theories in a bottom-up way. For many of us, if we understand the theory and how it evolved functionally in a historically constructed way, we can more easily relate to math. This is the way of 'discovery' that I had learned, much of it on my own.

I remember when I first learned algebra, we had formal statements which were confusing and unexplained. For instance, the preamble to most rules always began with, "For all Real numbers,...", and when we as students are not privileged until later to learn of imaginary (or Complex) numbers, this intimidates the learner as it sounds redundant when you don't know that numbers could be any different. A kid will think, "I must be too stupid to make sense of this", and so begin to shut off their minds to material built upon this misunderstanding.

I found an excellent old book called "Mathematics for the Million" in which it used a history style approach from ancient times to build up the theory of math as it developed by necessity. [by Lancelot Hogben 1937] I also found another author, Harold R. Jacobs, who wrote texts in this style. These are excellent examples but I believe the actual trouble with adapting them is that it requires more intrinsic understanding of the material by the teacher's as well as to their energy and creativity. Also, I believe that the rote method is more preferable with respect to efficiency due to the extensive time required to do the other.

I think that generally there are two types of learners: those who excel using memory and those who excel in understanding theory. The advantage to the former is that with memory, they are often more preferred since they appear to be quick and more useful in the general needs for our job demands. But it disadvantages those who prefer an understanding of the theory. Understanding the underlying theory tends to cement the memories long-term and even if you forget some formula, you can re-build it with the theory you learned.

Traditional math favors the logical foundational approach more related to the historical way. But it requires more time and patience. This 'Discovery Math' actually appears to be more about memorizing useful algorithms to be quicker. I believe that this is just another form of 'rote' if the student doesn't know the rationale for its 'discovery' [the proofs].

But I believe both ways are needed. What could be done is to separate those who have an aptitude for memory (often more socially communicative students) from those who preference understanding prior to memorizing. Both methods should be taught to both groups but initialize their education separately and then bring them back together in later courses.